a hyperbolic tragedy
by Appointment
Summary: George sees him lying there, cold and dead – harsh words for a harsh truth – and something inside of him has just frozen and died as well. - How George copes after Fred, in five parts.


a hyperbolic tragedy 

"i'm the setting sun behind the trees, the saddest one you've seen. i've been burning holes and breaking dreams, and i regret it. i'm fixing things i've broken, it's not as easy as it used to be."

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><p>George sees him lying there, cold and dead – <em>harsh words for a harsh truth<em> – and something inside of him has just frozen and died as well.

* * *

><p>The evening sky is dusty. He searches for stars to take his mind off feeling remorseful, confused, stricken. He had become just a shadow of the George he used to be since the funeral. He'd gradually become more of himself since returning home, and leaving the flat. He Apparates about halfway, and then walks through the Muggle town for the silence. Familiar faces stare, but don't go and speak with him. They notice he is alone, they notice something was wrong. He's thankful for it – for the silence, the lack of questions. It's nice, the momentary difference. When everything had numbed, at least. He smells faintly of Firewhiskey. George's problem is, he doesn't want to be himself. This new George was someone much different than the George five months ago. Someone much scarier to face. Probably because this George was quite alone, and much more uncontrolled.<p>

He arrives at The Burrow, greeted with kisses, hugs and a false sense of warmth. There's still an absence at the dining table.

During dinner, Ginny asks him if he wants to talk about it. His mother nods surreptitiously, he catches it though.

"No."

They don't ask again, but he can see it in the lines of his little sister's face that she wants him to open up and spill his secrets like the pages of an inflated book.

He doesn't tell his family about how the past few months have been going, nor will he ever. He won't tell them about the random women that stream in and out of his bedroom by the night, and he won't tell them about the bottles of Ogden's that litter the kitchen.

He won't tell them about the bruises and gashes that line up and down his arms, or the hauntingly familiar voice he's always hearing in the deep recesses of his mind.

Instead, he tells them how much Verity is helping with the shop, and how much he enjoys his mother's cooking. He smiles – lies.

In spite of this, he can't help but wonder what they all would do if he told them everything.

"Would you like a cup of tea, dear?" asks his mother, and he turns her down politely.

'You have a sickening inclination to lie, dear.' is what he hears in the back of his head, though not in his mother's voice.

Somebody much closer, yet quite far away.

* * *

><p>He's been set on returning to the shop in the coming week, by Hermione, of course. Her and Ron are trying to get him on his feet again, but he thinks to himself, it's much harder to lift dead weight. George barely leaves the little room in The Burrow unless he absolutely must, and he never wants to be around anybody. He eats his meals at very odd hours, food suddenly a grey abyss to his taste buds, and most flavours not cataloguing as he pithily chews and swallows. He turns away by some newfound drive when he's ever offered a hug by anybody, and his behaviour isn't questioned. He doesn't have to worry about why his parents and friends and siblings don't care – they do. That's really the problem, though.<p>

When Saturday comes, it is a peculiar day; one of those days that don't really happen at all. Until it finally strikes him that it's happening, that is. He ends up falling asleep at around two in the morning, sufficiently intoxicated, and still feeling the night like it's a Friday. When he wakes up Saturday morning, it feels like he's already lived the day through your nightmares, and that the fourteen hours that await him are just a subdued addendum.

In the morning, he gets ready slowly, not wanting to face the day. Stepping in and out of the shower felt like hours, and in turn, they probably were. He brushes his teeth, not looking up into the bathroom mirror, and fixes his hair – subconsciously brushing it over this mangled ear. When he comes downstairs, he no longer looks as pale and gaunt as he had when he awoke, but looks fraudulently 'alright'. His mother smiles at him – a real, wholehearted smile, not the bullshit he's been seeing all week – and tells him to eat up. He sits at the table, and scarfs down his food as quickly as he could manage without choking, just to get out of there, but he's not fast enough.

"George," says Ginny quietly, "Can I talk to you?"

"Depends what we'd be talking about, Gin."

It comes out as harsh and definite as the word 'no' would have been, so she falls silent, and doesn't press on. He feels Harry and Ron's eyes on him from across the table, and doesn't look up. Percy's eyes are added to the mix, and the only noise from there on is the awkward clatter of silverware and plates, until he clears his throat.

"I'm going down to London," says George, sidestepping the odd gapes he's being given, "To the shop. I'll be seeing you all later, I s'pose."

Again, he Apparates half way, to give himself time to relax before he enters the shop. This time, nobody stares at him. Perhaps news has already carried all the way through Diagon Alley that George Weasley wasn't really George Weasley anymore. Nothing is much different around the alley. Children still play games of Exploding Snap in corners of the street, men still barter off pointless objects; people still whisper and gossip about the same things. Though this time, he feels like he's been thrown into the mix of blather. He steps up to the door of Weasley's Wizard Wheezes, somewhat nervous. He's never been inside of it since before the war – he had only Apparated up to the flat and out, not wanting to face what was only a floor beneath him.

The door creaks open, rusty hinges. Opposite to the alley, everything has changed inside his and Fred's dream come true. It's dark and dusty, spiders scuttle across the floor, and a bunch of dead Puffskeins sit under the front desk. It was a grim atmosphere, to say the least, but none of it was attributed to the fact it was all in ruin. No, it was because he was without Fred. There was nothing more forbidding than being alone. He turns on the lights with the flick of his wand, and he realises the place is in more of a mess than he had thought. Dust covers boxes and counters like thick blankets, and it's quiet – a very tense, downhearted quiet.

The quiet won't last long when the ice he's placed over his heart begins to thaw, and then a little, hopeful looking boy walks in.

"Is this place finally open again?" he asks, a light in his eyes that George envies. Optimism.

"Not yet," says George, motioning to the wrecked dream around him, "But I'd say in a couple days, it should be good to go."

Pretending to be okay proves a simple task. Smiles are familiar to his face and not hard to muster when needed. He didn't particularly plan to open the shop again, but the boy's face was too much for him to deny. It was an all-familiar look.

As the day progresses, he lets himself get lost in the large amount of cleaning to be done. There's an insipid beauty in the silence around him – he's alone. There's a bold ugliness in it too – he's alone. But he loses himself in it, completely, and lets it all numb him into nothing.

* * *

><p>He feels everything rolling in like waves of the sea, and it drowns him. George finds that everything – <em>thinking, sleeping, moving, everything<em> – had become too backbreaking, too much. He sits in the living room, fingers caressing the curled edges of a family photo that's been sun aged. The pictures don't move, laugh, wave – anything. Arthur had taken it with a Muggle camera, and found it fascinating how things could be frozen in time – reminiscences, smiles. George loves it too; he thinks it's beautiful and strange. He and Fred stand in the back of the photo, smiles plastered onto their faces and naivety in glittering in their eyes, because they haven't the slightest of what would become of each other in the following months.

George is scared. As time progressed, he had begun to forget what Fred's voice had sounded like.

A little higher than his? A little deeper? Their voice had always been different – only slightly – even so, they didn't like how it made them different.

But he can barely remember the sound of Fred's voice now, the color of his eyes, or the color of his hair and the way it grew out. Everything was just like George's, but they differentiated. Only slightly – but they did.

But there's one thing that George is sure he'll never forget – touch. The hugs, the way they would snuggle deep in the night at four years of age, because night terrors were simply too much for one to handle on their own. It was light and liquid-like, sometimes rough and roguish, identical to his own. It laces through his memories, and whenever one starts slipping away, he remembers the feeling of his brother right next to him, and it's pulled right back to him.

Painfully.

"Talk to me."

He doesn't even realise that Ginny's been sitting right next to him until now. Her voice is forceful now – she needs to be let in.

"No."

"You can't keep it bottled in, George." she says, making him face her, "You know it as bloody well as I do."

"Piss off."

"No."

"You can't live in your memories."

"Don't fucking tell me what I can and can't do."

"Someone has to," she hisses, "And it seems everybody in this house is too scared to."

"No, it's because they don't want to look at me, Gin." he says, on his feet now, back turned to her. "They don't want to look at my face and say something stupid, and call me by his name."

It was true, too. They stared at him like he was nothing but a hollow spectre – a morbid hyperbole.

He thought perhaps it would be best to simply fill in their fears.

It would be the easiest thing to do.

* * *

><p>He's heard the horror stories – <em>really, who hasn't?<em> – though they don't quite take presence in his mind. He rummages through shelves and drawers in his father's shed full of Muggle things, and comes upon a tiny bottle with the words 'Librium'. He didn't really know what they were, or what they did, but he had learned enough from Muggle Studies that dosages weren't to be played with. An inadequate note is placed on the desk next to him, his untidy scrawl spelling out something much shorter than he knew his family deserved, but he couldn't manage much more.

George downed the bottle in half a minute, dry pills scratching and arguing with his throat as he forced them down. He stared at the note on the table, until his eyelids grew heavy, and darkness kissed him to sleep.

'_I'm sorry. I love you all.'_

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><p><strong>AN: I've had this written up for weeks now, and I decided to post it now. George is just on super angst the whole time . but I love him still, and I feel like I did a good job with this. It's not exactly canon, seeing as he attempts suicide, but it could be, eh. (does it work? I've left you on a cliffy. :D)Anyways, R&R please! It would make me so so so happy. :) ** I don't own Harry Potter, or the song Replace You by Silverstein.


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